As the maintainer of LILO, I know that there is advantages on GRUB and advantages on LILO. Some users will need LILO advantages, some will need GRUB advantages. I'm not intending to make a flamewar of bootloaders. I just suggest not to have a "default" bootloader but to let the user to choose what is the one she needs. Robert Millan <zeratul2@wanadoo.es> writes: > Hi there! > > Time to talk a bit about which is going to be the default bootloader for i386 > in next Debian release. > > I (as GRUB co-maintainer) have discussed with Jason the possibility of GRUB > being the default bootloader for i386 in Debian 3.1, and we agree that GRUB is > now mature enough for that. > > Let me summarise the reasons why I believe GRUB is a good option: > > - Clean dessign. While GRUB's dessign is far from perfect, it is still a > very flexible one. GRUB understands filesystems and network protocols, > making it able to load kernels dynamicaly from the disk or the network, > without need to reinstall into the MBR with every kernel update. > > - Multi-kernel support. GRUB supports many kernels other than Linux. By > adhering to the Multiboot Specification, the Hurd and other Multiboot > compliant kernels can be loaded by GRUB. In addition, it's able to load > the kernel of FreeBSD, the kernel of NetBSD and the kernel of OpenBSD. > > This is specialy interesting for Debian, since we intend to provide Debian > flavors based on these kernels. Setting GRUB as the default bootloader will > make it easy for Debian GNU/Linux users to try its kernel-cousins. > > - Popularity. It's obvious there's no precise counter for popularity, but > looking at the references we have around my impression is that GRUB is > the most popular bootloader in the free software community: > > GRUB is already the default bootloader or preferred option in: > > - Red Hat (http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-7.2-Manual/install-guide/s1-guimode-bootload.html) > - Gentoo (http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-x86-install.xml) > - Mandrake (http://doc.mandrakelinux.com/MandrakeLinux/91/en/Quick_Startup.html/misc-params.html#drakxid-setupBootloader) > > According to Popularity Contest [1], 141 participants use GRUB regularly, > while 304 use LILO regularly. According to a recent poll in Debian Planet > [2], a few more participants prefer GRUB over LILO. (Obviously, the latter > is not as accurate as one could expect, but it serves as an indication) > > [1] http://people.debian.org/~apenwarr/popcon/results...UNKNOWN...html > (Results as of Nov 18 13:05:35) > [2] http://www.debianplanet.org/node.php?id=1004 > > If we consider the "advantage" of LILO being default, the results indicate > GRUB is much more popular: > > More than 1/2 of participants in Debian Planet's poll, and almost 1/3 of > Popularity Contest partitipants preferred GRUB. All these people switched > from LILO to GRUB _after_ having tried LILO, but it's very unlikely that a > significant part of the 1/2 or the 2/3 of LILO users ever tried GRUB. > > > Expecting to hear some feedback from the Debian Installer hackers about what > the requirements are, and gladly disposed to address them. > > -- > Robert Millan > > "[..] but the delight and pride of Aule is in the deed of making, and in the > thing made, and neither in possession nor in his own mastery; wherefore he > gives and hoards not, and is free from care, passing ever on to some new work." > > -- J.R.R.T, Ainulindale (Silmarillion) > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-boot-request@lists.debian.org > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org > -- Andres Roldan Fluidsignal Group <aroldan@fluidsignal.com> The Debian Project <aroldan@debian.org> GIGAX <aroldan@gigax.org> GPG Key-ID 0xB29396EB Home Page http://people.fluidsignal.com/~aroldan
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